Use the labels in the right column to find what you want. Or you can go thru them one by one, there are only 15849 posts. Searching is done in the search box in upper left corner. I blog on anything to do with stroke.DO NOT DO ANYTHING SUGGESTED HERE AS I AM NOT MEDICALLY TRAINED, YOUR DOCTOR IS, LISTEN TO THEM. BUT I BET THEY DON'T KNOW HOW TO GET YOU 100% RECOVERED. I DON'T EITHER, BUT HAVE PLENTY OF QUESTIONS FOR YOUR DOCTOR TO ANSWER.

Deans' stroke musings

Changing stroke rehab and research worldwide now.Time is Brain!Just think of all thetrillions and trillions of neuronsthatDIEeach daybecause there areNOeffective hyperacute therapies besides tPA(only 12% effective). I have 493 posts on hyperacute therapy, enough for researchers to spend decades proving them out. These are my personal ideas and blog on stroke rehabilitation and stroke research. Do not attempt any of these without checking with your medical provider. Unless you join me in agitating, when you need these therapies they won't be there.

What this blog is for:

Shortly after getting out of the hospital and getting NO information on the process or protocols of stroke rehabilitation and recovery I started searching on the internet and found that no other survivor received useful information. This is an attempt to cover all stroke rehabilitation information that should be readily available to survivors so they can talk with informed knowledge to their medical staff. It's quite disgusting that this information is not available from every stroke association and doctors group.My back ground story is here:http://oc1dean.blogspot.com/2010/11/my-background-story_8.html

Thursday, July 12, 2018

Yet More Evidence that Viruses May Cause Alzheimer's Disease

You better hope like hell that your doctors and hospital follow up this research. You will need it.

For decades, the idea that a bacteria or virus could help cause Alzheimer’s disease was dismissed as a fringe theory. But not so much anymore. On Wednesday, a team of researchers from Harvard Medical School reported in the journal Neuron the latest bit of evidence suggesting herpesviruses can spark the cascade of events that leads to Alzheimer’s disease, a fatal form of dementia that afflicts at least 5 million Americans.

The researchers studied how neurons in mice responded to the presence of herpes simplex 1 (HSV-1), the virus that causes cold sores. In a separate experiment involving a 3D model of the human brain grown in a dish, they also studied human herpesvirus 6 (HHV-6), the germ responsible for causing the childhood skin disease roseola. These viruses are usually caught early on in life and stay dormant somewhere in the body, but as we age, they almost always migrate up to the brain.

Some of the mice used in the experiment were genetically bred to have neurons that could create the human version of amyloid beta (or amyloid-β). Amyloid-β is a protein normally produced in the brain. But in Alzheimer’s patients, it clumps together to form the plaques that are thought by many experts to slowly destroy the brain. Many scientists had long assumed that amyloid-β was essentially a waste product, with no meaningful purpose. But the researchers had earlier shown that amyloid-β might actually serve as a first line of defense against fungal and bacterial infection.

In the current study, both viruses seemed to provoke an identical reaction. The mice’s brains grew new deposits of amyloid-β plaques practically “overnight,” according to senior author Rudy Tanzi, a geneticist specializing in the brain at Massachusetts General Hospital as well as Harvard Medical School. And the mice bred with these human-like neurons were able to better fend off brain infection than mice without them. The same effects were also seen in the petri dish.

“The seeding of amyloid is what causes the deposition of plaque,” Tanzi told Gizmodo, “and herpesviruses and other microbes can rapidly seed amyloid-β.”

The study is the second in recent weeks to support the role of viruses in Alzheimer’s disease. That first study, also published in Neuron and led by researchers from the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, found evidence that certain herpesviruses are more abundantly present in the brains of people who died with Alzheimer’s; it also suggested that genes belonging to these viruses directly interact with human genes that raise the risk of the disease.

The timing is no accident, Tanzi said. His team has corresponded with the Mount Sinai team for years, and they had originally planned to release their results at the same time (both will be published in the same print July edition of the journal). It was the Mount Sinai team, Tanzi notes, that suggested the Harvard team look at HHV-6 as well as HSV-1 in their experiments, since that was the virus they had started to zero in on in their work.

While Tanzi and his team acknowledge the long-ignored work by other researchers supporting the viral hypothesis of Alzheimer’s, as it’s known, he said their research takes things in a slightly different direction. It’s an attempt to reconcile various theories about what causes Alzheimer’s.

Supporters of the viral theory have often speculated that germs such as HSV-1—the most commonly blamed culprit—directly goad the brain into spiraling out of control through inflammation, with amyloid-β only being a bystander. But in Tanzi’s version, amyloid-β still is the key cog behind the disease. Neurons use the protein to either kill or safely trap viral or bacterial particles in a “nano-net,” as Tanzi put it. In Alzheimer’s disease, this process goes off the rails, leading to the uncontrolled buildup of plaques. From there, Tanzi’s work has shown, the plaques trigger the production of tangles—clumps of another brain protein called tau seen in the later stages of Alzheimer’s—which together then trigger chronic inflammation. All of these moving parts align to wither the brain, eventually causing death.

In this scenario, it’s not so much the germ, but the immune system that’s at fault. “The microbes are the prequel to the amyloid hypothesis,” Tanzi said.

Viruses are only one of the things that could set off Alzheimer’s, he pointed out. The same sort of seeding might happen in people whose genes cause them to make too much amyloid-β, in the absence of infection. And genetics might help explain why only some people’s infections cause the brain to start producing amyloid-β en masse. “Just having the virus isn’t enough,” Tanzi said.

But given the widespread failure of Alzheimer’s treatments that have focused on stopping amyloid-β production, the viral link provides a new, clear direction for future clinical trials: Preventative antimicrobial drugs or vaccines that can stop these germs from ever reaching the brain in the first place. Some recent, if observational research (meaning, not controlled trials) has already suggested that these drugs can lower the risk of dementia.

These sorts of definitive studies are likely still a while away, but there’s certainly a change in the headwinds.

“I think we’ve gotten past the point where this idea is ridiculed, but some might be still violently opposing it,” Tanzi said, referring to the 19th century German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer’s maxim about the three stages of truth (first ridicule, then violent opposition, and finally acceptance as self-evident).

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Questions or comments or would you like me to discuss something? I will try to answer, No medical diagnosis given or received. I am damned opinionated so don't expect fluff.

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Canoeing Moose

Just because my goal is to get back to canoeing and this moose is so ripped and cool looking. And he's even a solo paddler. But his right hand on the T-grip is wrong and the right arm should be extended.